


Viridian

by lirin



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), White Collar
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 14:22:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20931674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: An anonymous tip says that a Munch landscape recently purchased by Tony Stark is a forgery. Neal Caffrey and Peter Burke just want to ask a few questions, but Stark foists them off on his intern.





	Viridian

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LeesaPerrie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeesaPerrie/gifts).

Neal Caffrey fidgeted in the passenger seat of Peter Burke's Ford Taurus as they made their way slowly through the Manhattan rush hour traffic. "Are you going to tell me what the case is this morning, or do you want it to be a surprise?" he asked finally, after he had given Peter what he felt was a reasonable time to volunteer information, and yet none had been volunteered.

"Those Stark Industries bonds that were _allegedly _linked to you years ago, and that were not-so-allegedly forged according to Stark Industries, did you forge those?"

"Peter, were those verbal air-quotes around 'allegedly'? Because I didn't think you did verbal air-quotes."

The light turned green, and Peter honked at the car in front of them. "Just answer the question?"

"I have never forged anything from Stark Industries," Neal said.

"Well, that's great news," Peter said. "Because we're going to meet with Anthony Stark."

"Wait, really? You didn't tell him I had anything to do with those alleged forged bonds, did you? Because they _were_ allegedly linked to me, and even though I didn't forge them that doesn't mean I want Stark putting two and two together. There are reasons why Iron Man isn't my favorite superhero, and mostly it's just because I think Spider-Man is cooler, but also I'm not sure how much Stark would like me if he goes digging into my past."

"I didn't tell him," Peter said, "but I think he has computers and artificial intelligences and who-knows-what to put two and two together for him."

Neal frowned, but didn't pursue the question further. "So where are we meeting him? He sold Avengers Tower, right?"

"Yeah, but a guy like that isn't going to have just one piece of property in Manhattan," Peter said. "He's got some sort of lab that they said he'd be at. I don't know if he owns it or rents it, and frankly I don't care. I just care whether he knows we're coming and whether he's planning on dodging us."

Neal perked up. "Why would Iron Man want to dodge the FBI?"

"I don't know if he'd want to," Peter said, "but I'm not ruling it out, either. Stark bought a painting last night at one of those charity auctions where they wine and dine rich people. The auctioneers got a tip after the fact that the painting was forged. They contacted Stark and offered to refund his money and unwind the sale, but Stark either hasn't received their calls or doesn't want to give the painting back, but we're not sure which. So we decided it was worth looking into further. If Stark's got the painting with him at his lab, I want you to take a look at it, see whether you think it's a fake, and I'll ask him a few questions. Could be money laundering, I don't know. I'm not a billionaire superhero, I don't really know how they operate. Basically, we just want to get a feel for whether it's something the FBI should look into further, or whether it's all above board."

"What's the painting?"

"A Munch landscape from the early 1900s," Peter said. "There's a folder in the back seat, you can read what we know about it. It's not much. But the art auction catalog had a bit of information. There was this town in Norway that Munch summered in and did a lot of painting there, so it's one of the many paintings he made there."

Neal read the folder and then spent some time Googling Munch and refreshing his memory of Munch's body of work, and by the time he was finished, they were just pulling into the private parking garage attached to the building where Stark had his laboratory. "Welcome, FBI agents," said a disembodied voice. "Mr. Stark's laboratory is on the third floor. You can come right up."

"Sounds great," Neal said, trying not to act too bothered by the voice and the creepy AI surveillance it was probably attached to. "And I'm not an FBI agent."

"I am aware of that," the voice continued. As they left the parking garage for the elevator, the voice followed them. Neal leaned against the side of the elevator and peered at its ceiling, looking for speakers, but they were well concealed. "You are in my records as Neal Caffrey, conman and forger, and confidential informant on work release with the FBI."

"See? Definitely not an FBI agent," Neal said.

The elevator dinged, and Peter led the way out into a spacious glass-walled laboratory. There were a number of robots moving about and doing things, but despite there being room for many more, there were only two people. One, typing away on a hologram screen, was instantly recognizable as the famous Tony Stark; the other was a young man Neal was pretty sure he hadn't seen before, though it was hard to say for certain because of all the chemistry safety gear he was wearing as he did something complicated with test tubes and beakers.

Peter strode forward. "Mr. Stark? I'm Special Agent Peter Burke. I was hoping I could ask you a few questions about a painting you purchased yesterday evening."

Stark waved his hand at them impatiently. "I'm kind of in the middle of something right now, you'll have to talk to my intern."

"Mr. Stark, I'm also in the middle of something," the young man (evidently Stark's intern) piped up.

"Nope, this is definitely a job for an intern, so you'll have to take a break," Stark said. "Your aunt told me she wanted this to be a _real_ internship, and I'm afraid that means doing all the intern scutwork as well as the fun, uh, science parts of the internship. Oh, look at the time. I've got to go check on an experiment in another room." He swiped his hand and all the holograms around him disappeared, then with another half-wave to his FBI guests, he wandered off through another door.

The intern sighed, pulled off his safety goggles, and walked over to Neal and Peter. "So, what do you want to know?" he asked.

"We were hoping we could just take a look at this painting that everybody's so worried about," Peter told him.

"Can I look at your chemistry project?" Neal asked, and wandered over to look at it without waiting for an answer.

"Um, I think Mr. Stark already had the painting shipped off to, uh, one of his other facilities. But he likes how it looks, so he's okay with keeping it even if it's a forgery. Please don't touch that, it's a really strong acid."

"Yeah, I know how to treat chemicals with respect," Neal said. (He didn't volunteer that he'd learned most of his chemical-handling skills during various forgery endeavors, though it probably wasn't that hard to figure out.) "Is this supposed to be bubbling?"

"As long as it doesn't overflow the beaker, it'll be fine," the intern replied. "Was there anything else you guys needed? I can find out where the painting was sent to and get someone there to email you a photo or something? But like I said, I don't even know off the top of my head where it was sent to. Mr. Stark owns a lot of real estate."

"Those holograms Stark was looking at, some of those looked kind of like the painting," Peter pointed out.

"Did they? Look, you really should be talking to Mr. Stark about this. I'm just the intern, Mr. Stark lets me use his laboratory but that doesn't mean he tells me anything about what he's working on." The bubbling beaker finally overflowed at that point, and the intern yelped and ran over.

"I didn't touch anything," Neal said.

"I know you didn't," the intern said. "This reaction really shouldn't be left unattended, but I figured I could get away with it for a minute."

The door at the other side of the room opened, and Stark popped back in. Neal wondered if he'd been making phone calls about them, or just quizzing his AI. Billionaires didn't abandon FBI agents just to check on experiments, and besides, why would he have an experiment in another room when this room was huge enough for all the experiments that one could ever want to do? (A setup like this would be fantastic for forgery, too—except that he doubted Stark had enough art supplies. But for aging a painting or something once it was finished, it would be perfect.)

"Okay, so, you just want to take a look at this painting and then you'll go and leave us alone?" Stark said. "Because I've got it here, but I'm not interested in unwinding the sale, so if that's all you're after, then you really don't have anything to investigate and I wish you'd stop wasting my time. Thursdays are my only day I've got an intern here, and you're wasting our science time."

"Speaking of your intern," Peter said, "I thought he said you'd already shipped the painting off."

"I said I _thought_ he had. There's a lot of things Mr. Stark doesn't tell me."

"Well, let's see the painting," Peter said. "Neal, go take a look at it."

Stark walked over to a cabinet under a lab bench that looked just like all the other lab benches, and lifted out an oil painting. "You get five minutes," he said. "And you don't get to take the painting, I own it."

Neal pulled out a magnifying glass and leaned over the painting. The intern came over and leaned over it next to him. "What are you looking for?" he asked.

"Hesitation marks, incorrect brush strokes, just anything that looks wrong," Neal told him. "Pigments that Munch wouldn't have used would be another clue," he added, as his eye fell on a couple of green brushstrokes in the corner. He'd have to research Munch's pigment choices further, but at first glance, he could at least say that the pigment looked _really weird_.

"So, who do you think called in the anonymous tip about the forgery?" Peter asked Stark.

"I don't know, maybe I sniped somebody's bid at the auction, or maybe somebody just wanted to give me a hard time this afternoon," Stark said.

"Is there a spectrometer around here?" Neal asked the intern. He pointed at the green brushstrokes. "I'd like to see what this pigment is made of."

"Well, yeah, I think—"

"Nope, five minutes are up," Stark said.

"Aw, come on, I want to see," the intern said. "He's right, that green paint looks different from the stuff around it."

"You can see it too?" Neal asked. "Have you done much painting?"

"Um, no," the intern stammered. "Actually, it may have just been a trick of the light. Now that I look at it again, it doesn't look much different."

"Can't we just have a couple of minutes to put it under the spectrometer?" Neal asked again. "Peter, after we look at it under the spectrometer, we can go, right?"

"I suppose so," Peter said.

"Well, if you promise you'll get out of my hair afterwards, you can have a couple of minutes with the spectrometer," Stark said. "Kid, show them where it is."

The intern picked up the painting and led them to yet another identical-looking lab bench, which he set the painting on. He waved his hands over it in no conceivable pattern that Neal could make out, but when he withdrew his hands, a hologram appeared in the air over the bench. "Now, it might not look like any spectrometer you've used before," he said, "but you should find the controls pretty self-explanatory. What do you expect to find?"

"I don't know yet," Neal said, poking at the hologram. "I've never seen anything quite like that green."

"Yeah, it's weird," the intern said. "Does it look like it's glowing to you? I mean, not really glowing, because obviously everybody would be able to see that, but kind of like the way glowing things look like but without the actual glowing part."

Neal looked at him for a second before turning back to the holo-spectrometer. "I have no idea what something that's glowing but not actually glowing would look like," he said, "so I don't think I can answer that question."

"I mean like, well—" The intern's words were swallowed up in an explosion of breaking glass, as the windows of the far wall shattered inward.

"Kid, get our guests to the safe room and take the painting with you," Stark snapped. He walked towards the far wall, and as he did, the Iron Man suit formed around him. Neal stared. That was so cool.

The intern grabbed Neal's arm and dragged him back towards the elevator. "Come on, we've got to get you out of here," he said. He had a really strong grip for a teenager.

"I'm going, I'm going!" Neal said. He and Peter followed the intern to a stairwell next to the elevators, down half a flight, and into a small windowless room with a couple of chairs and a couch. "Does this sort of thing happen often?"

The intern set the painting down on the couch and leaned against the wall. "I suppose it happens more often to Mr. Stark than to some people, but this is the first time one of his buildings has ever been attacked while I've been interning for him." He stuck out his hand. "I'm Peter, by the way," he said. "Peter Parker."

"Well, that's not going to be at all confusing," Neal said, shaking Peter Parker's hand and looking back and forth between him and Peter Burke. "I already have one very important Peter in my life. Do you have any nicknames? Or can I just keep thinking of you as the intern? I'm Neal Caffrey, but the AI probably already told you that."

"Yeah, she did," Peter-the-intern said. There was a loud bang from outside, and they all glanced nervously in that direction. "Mr. Stark might need help," he commented anxiously.

"I'm sure he's got it under control," Neal said, mentally crossing his fingers. "Besides, superheroes are just on another level, and we civilians are safest staying out of the crossfire."

"And we know how you always follow your own advice in that regard and never jump into crossfire situations without thinking," Peter Burke said.

"You know what, I'm just going to check on the building security system," Peter-the-intern said. "It's upstairs, and I should just make sure the building's locked down. It'll be fine, I know my way around the building and I'll stay out of harm's way." Before Neal or Peter could respond, he darted out of the room.

"Well, this is just great," Neal said. "Do you think we should follow him and make sure he's okay?"

Peter shook his head. "If the kid wants to put himself in danger for an unpaid internship where he has to do unspecified scutwork including but not limited to talking to FBI agents and hiding in safe rooms, that's his lookout. I should call in to the office and make sure they know what's going on, although I'm sure Iron Man has things under control."

"Hey, Iron Man's rich enough, maybe it's a paid internship," Neal said. He wandered over to look at the painting. "Do you think the attackers are after the painting?"

"The only interest I could see a supervillain having in Munch is if they decided to theme their supervillain identity around _The Scream_," Peter said. "Though—do you think it's a forgery?"

"We'd only gotten preliminary results on the spectrometry by the time the windows blew in, but that wasn't any chemical compound I'd ever seen before," Neal said. "I'd have to take a look at some other Munches under a spectrometer; if none of them have it, then maybe it's a forgery, and if not, then I really want to know where Munch got the stuff."

"So what if somebody's after the mysterious chemical compound?" Peter said.

"That sounds unfortunately plausible," Neal said. And then the corner of the safe room blew up, probably because the bad guys totally were after the painting. 

Neal and Peter ducked behind the couch, since it was the only piece of furniture in the room big enough to hide behind, even though that put them right by the painting. Peter drew his gun and handed his cell phone to Neal. "I've called Diana but she hasn't picked up yet," Peter said. "Tell her what's going on when she answers." He aimed his gun at the hole in the corner of the wall.

The next second, Iron Man and Spider-Man were right there, in the safe room with them. Iron Man blasted any bad guy who got too close to the hole in the wall, and Spider-Man webbed it closed. Neal stared at them, and completely forgot about the phone in his hand.

"Sorry for the trouble," Iron Man said. "I'll explain once we get the place secure." Then he and Spider-Man were off again (through the door this time, because the hole was full of webbing).

Peter snatched his phone back. "Hi, Diana, we're at Tony Stark's laboratory, and it just came under attack by unidentified assailants, but he seems to have it under control. Spider-Man's here, too."

"Well, that must be quite the fanboy moment for you two," Diana's voice came over speakerphone. "We'll dispatch a team just in case it's not actually under control."

"Thanks, Diana," Peter said, and hung up. "It was not a fanboy moment," he added to Neal.

"But you have to admit, it was really cool," Neal said. "I mean, Iron Man _and_ Spider-Man? I wonder if Iron Man called Spider-Man, or if he was just in the area. Doesn't he usually hang out more in Queens, though? But superheroes probably all keep in touch with each other."

There hadn't been any shooting or banging or any other loud noises for several minutes, so they weren't too surprised when Stark showed up at the door of the safe room again (though Peter did keep his gun aimed at the door until they were sure it was Stark). "Sorry about that," Stark said. "Thanks for looking after the painting. I was hoping nobody else was interested in it besides me, but I guess somebody figured out what was up with it."

"So what _is_ up with it?" Peter asked.

"Is it that green pigment?" Neal added.

"You know how Munch hung out a lot in this one town in Norway?" Stark asked.

"Yeah, Åsgårdstrand," Neal said. "He spent several summers there, and a lot of his paintings are called this or that thing in Åsgårdstrand."

"Like this one, _Street in __Åsgårdstrand_," Stark said, waving his hand at the painting. "So Åsgårdstrand means beach near Åsgård, which is supposedly a farm that existed near the village years earlier."

"Isn't Thor from a place called Asgard?" Neal said.

"Yes, and I can tell you, where he's from is not a farm in Norway."

"So Munch had ties to Thor's Asgard?"

"Well, Munch had ties to a village that had ties to Asgard. And somewhere along the way, he got his hands on some pigment that was definitely not from Earth. I heard about it a while ago, and it didn't seem particularly important—I've had a lot more important things to worry about. But when the painting came up for auction, I figured why not. Unfortunately, I guess somebody else got a clue too."

"Hey guys," Peter-the-intern said, bursting through the door of the safe room behind Stark. "I wasn't sure if you'd had time to lock the building down, Mr. Stark," he said earnestly, "so I went upstairs to check on the security settings. I hope that helped."

Stark patted him on the shoulder. "You did good, kid."

"Spider-Man showed up to help, too," Neal told Peter-the-intern. "The attackers blew the corner of the room open, but you can see he was able to get the hole all closed up. Peter and I hid behind the couch. We would have made room for you, if you'd stayed here, though it would have been tight. It was pretty cool to see Spider-Man. He doesn't come around to the part of Manhattan I'm limited to very often, so I've never seen him before. But then I guess if you're interning for Iron Man, you probably get to meet lots of Avengers."

"I don't think Spider-Man's actually an Avenger," Peter-the-intern said. "But yeah, I've seen a few."

"Did Spider-Man already leave?" Peter Burke added. "I think Neal wanted to ask him for his autograph."

Neal opened his mouth to deny that, but then, it would be really cool to meet Spider-Man.

"Yeah, he left," Peter-the-intern said. "He was swinging north. I guess he figured his work here was done."

"Guess so," Neal said. "Oh well."

"Mr. Stark, you should let him know that Mr. Caffrey would like an autograph," Peter-the-intern said. "Maybe he could drop by midtown Manhattan sometime."

"I'll let him know," Stark said. "Now shoo, my intern and I have science stuff left to do, and too much of our time has been wasted already."

"I'd love to hear what you find out about that green pigment!" Neal called over his shoulder as Stark pushed him and Peter into the elevator.

(Two weeks later, Spider-Man swung onto June's balcony. He was surprisingly tight-lipped for a superhero with such a quippy reputation, but he shook Neal's hand and mumbled something about how Stark had mentioned him, and he signed Neal's sketchbook on the page where Neal had made a bunch of doodles of Spider-Man that time the FBI had had a stakeout in Queens and he'd been bored out of his mind on van duty. Then he was off again, thwipping through the sky. Neal drew a sketch of Spider-Man at that first moment he'd shown up, perched on the balcony balustrade, and gave it to June. Having Spider-Man pay him a visit wasn't quite as cool as hiding in a safe room while Iron Man and Spider-Man saved the day, but it was still one of Neal's favorite things that had ever happened to him.)


End file.
